Greg and Colin Strause, the directors of the Skyline franchise, were also in charge of Alien vs. Predator Requiem. After Requiem’s box office failure, the Brothers Strause attempted to blame it on the management, but no one was willing to accept it, not even the AVP franchise’s most ardent fans, let alone critics. So, in order to show themselves and their mettle, these two decided to make another film, and thus the Skyline series was born in 2010.
The franchise is noted for its outlandish but ambitious depiction of an invasion by human founders. The franchise consists of three films, each of which goes one step further in terms of prominent sci-fi elements and spectacular visual effects than the preceding one.
Interestingly, the original film’s physical production cost only $500,000, but the overall budget with visual effects was $10–20 million, so that should give you an indication of how precise and intense the moments would be. Beyond Skyline, the sequel to the franchise was released in 2017, and it added a martial arts sci-fi element to the picture, which felt like a breath of fresh air.
In this video, we will look at the Skyline Franchise and its Harvester Aliens, as well as how and why they need human brains so much. Prepare to say to yourself, “I can not believe that just happened!” a number of times. Let us get started, shall we?
Skyline (2010)
For Terry’s birthday party, Jarrod arrives in Los Angeles with his wife, Elaine. Jarrod, Elaine, Terry, his wife Candice, and assistant Denise celebrate the birthday in full spirit, but later during an argument, Elaine reveals that she is pregnant. Around dawn, the following day, several streaks of blue lights descend from the sky and begin to take over people.
The lights could mysteriously hypnotize anyone who looked at them, later turning them into immobile zombies, after which they would be sucked in by alien ships. One of Jarrod and Elaine’s friends get sucked in by the machines, and Jarrod, too, would have been lost had it not been for Terry, who tackled him. The two friends then go to the roof to investigate these strange lights that seem to affect a person both psychologically and physiologically.
To their utter horror and shock, they witness giant alien ships descending from the sky and sucking up thousands of immobile, zombified people. Furthermore, there are alien drones that are attacking people, and one of these drones attacked Terry and Jarrod. In the struggle to escape from the drone, Elaine accidentally looked straight into the hypnotizing blue light. However, Terry and Jarrod managed to save her in time.
In an attempt to save themselves, Terry finds his neighbor Walt so that they could leave in the latter’s car. However, when Walt’s dog runs away from him, he goes after it, only to get attacked by another creature and get abducted. Jarrod theorizes that open waters are the safest place because there has been no alien presence over the sea.
The group then comes across Colin and Jen, who were also trying to flee the building. As Terry’s car left the building, it got smashed by a huge quadrupedal alien or Tanker, and Denise lost her life in the mishap. Terry escaped, but the aliens abducted him. The rest of them retreated back into the garage for safety. However, they come across another alien that resembles a giant squid or an octopus with several long, agile tentacles. The creature took away Colin and cornered the rest. One of the characters slammed an SUV right into the alien creature, seemingly killing it.
However, while they were trying to free Colin, it came back to life and sucked out Colin’s brain before replacing Colin’s brain with its own. They discovered that attempts to run out of the building were futile and resorted to run back into the building, but Jen got abducted while they were doing so.
They decided to hide and think of a foolproof plan of action. The following day, however, the United States Air Force launched an attack on the alien spaceships and the numerous alien drones. The Air Force used uncrewed combat aerial vehicles and conventional drones that were armed with air-to-air missiles. While most of the stealth planes got destroyed, one managed to pierce through the carnage and shoot a nuclear missile into the alien mothership.
The detonation of the nuke seemingly killed the aliens and destroyed their mothership, but strangely, the aliens were still alive, and the mothership started to repair itself. Jarrod reveals that being affected by the blue alien light made him feel more powerful, and soon Jarrod displays superhuman strength and pledges to save his family at all costs.
Soon, Jarrod and Elaine head to the roof because rescue choppers had arrived. The building’s concierge, Oliver, and Terry’s wife Candice get stuck in the room, where Candice accidentally exposes herself to the light after which, Oliver attempted to kill the alien by exploding the room with gas.
Meanwhile, the squid-like alien attacked Elaine and Jarrod, but Jarrod manages to kill it. However, they were now surrounded by aliens and accepted their fates. They looked into the blue light and got sucked into the alien ship. Meanwhile, it is also revealed that major cities like New York, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, London, etc., had fallen to the alien invasion, and it seemed like the extraterrestrials had won the battle. Inside the mother ship, Elaine wakes up on a huge stack of human bodies.
Not far from her, she notices Jarrod, whose brain was being sucked through tubes into machines. But she could not help him. Soon, Elaine is probed but is left untouched, only to be taken to another room with several other pregnant women, where their babies were being removed from them, killing the mothers in the process.
But in a strange turn of events, Jarrod’s brain started to glow red instead of blue, signaling that it was a good brain. As the brain is inserted into a new alien body, Jarrod retained control and came to help his wife and unborn child, and the film ends on a cliffhanger.
The first film of the franchise didn’t make as huge an impression as was expected by the directors, but it still managed to do pretty well at the box office. It primarily did well because of the brilliant visual effects, but when a film succeeds only because of its effects, the film’s future may seem a bit unpredictable and unstable.
But as it turns out, Skyline has aged surprisingly well, if not like fine wine. For a film with a limited budget, it does fairly well in terms of production design and overall aesthetics. However, what the film fails to do is manage to build any strong emotional connection between the characters or between the characters and the audience. A good alien film is one in which the viewers start relating with the characters, where there’s a sense of dread and a fear of the ultimate doom.
But with Skyline, the viewer doesn’t necessarily care, but the effects and the monsters are so brilliant that the feeling of alienation from the characters gets overshadowed, and the viewer finds themselves hooked to their screens. Also, the film’s climax gives you a bang for your buck and value for your time. It all culminates in an elaborate alien conspiracy to take down human civilization by harvesting human brains to create bio-mechanical supersoldiers. That’s kind of novel, but not entirely.
Beyond Skyline (2017)
The film takes place on the same night as the original film. It presents a Los Angeles police detective named Mark Corley, who struggles to get his estranged son out of jail because of the alien invasion. As almost the entire population gets sucked into the alien ships, Mark helps several survivors to subway tunnels to help them escape the aliens, but most of these survivors either get abducted by the aliens or get killed.
Only Mark, Trent, Audrey, and a blind man named Sarge manage to flee the initial assault, but even they get abducted by a huge alien tanker and into an alien spaceship. Once aboard, Mark embarks on a quest to find his son Trent and comes to meet Elaine and her now-transformed husband, Jarrod.
Elaine explains to Mark that Jarrod retained control of his mind despite his transformation into the alien soldier. We know from the first film that Elaine was pregnant, but her pregnancy accelerates, and she gives birth to a daughter before succumbing to the pain of this unnatural delivery. Mark and Jarrod then join hands to destroy the ship by placing explosives in the ship’s primary control system.
But a fight breaks out in which Jarrod dies while fighting an alien commander. Mark rushes and manages to save Audrey, but his son Trent was a lost cause. Trent’s brain is transferred to another bio-mechanical alien creature. Later, the explosives detonate, and the ship crash-lands in the rural parts of Laos.
But as was seen earlier, the ship started to repair itself, but Sarge, Mark, and Audrey escape with Elaine and Jarrod’s child. While Sarge succumbs to his wounds, the group meets Sua and Kanya, two locals who had been fighting against the aliens. As the group moves through the jungles of Laos, the group notices that the baby is growing at an accelerated rate. She turns from a just born to a three-year-old in a matter of just one day.
They reach a human resistance facility that was located amidst ruins. Meanwhile, they have to face other challenges like rogue police officers. At the facility, a medical officer named Harper studies the anomaly that was this abnormally developing child. He discovers that the child’s DNA is unique and constantly evolving, and naturally, it might be the key to defeating the violent extraterrestrial guests.
Harper seemed like a brilliant scientist as he was able to use the child’s DNA and salvaged alien tech to develop a serum that he believed would free the transformed soldiers of their alien bodies and restore their human state. Sua insists that all bio-mechanical beings shall be killed at sight, but Mark manages to seek her support to save Trent.
While patrolling, Kanya came face-to-face with a quadrupedal tanker alien and sacrificed herself by luring it to a minefield from the time of the Vietnam War. She did manage to destroy it, but she unwittingly gave away their location to the aliens who had been looking for Elaine and Jarrod’s newborn child. As the aliens converged to the hideout, a battle ensued, and several parties from both sides got killed, including Harper, the medical officer.
However, Mark managed to use Harper’s serum to turn the mind-controlling blue light to red. This freed the bio-mechanical soldiers from the hypnotizing effect, and they gained a mind of their own, much like the transformed Jarrod. Soon, however, he gets attacked by the alien leader and its minions. But, Mark, Audrey, Sua, and a rogue cop named Huana fight back, making what can be called the last stand.
With his mind restored, a transformed Trent fights inside an alien tanker. Soon, the child joined the battlefield and fixed a cannon to help Trent kill the alien leader and release the red light that freed the transformed soldiers from their mind-control state. They seemingly saved Earth, and Audrey names the baby girl Rose.
Rose grows into an adult in a matter of ten years, and it seems she now controls an alien ship, with a still-transformed Trent as her second-in-command and her adopted brother. It turns out that Rose was leading the freed alien soldiers and other humans to attack other alien ships and the alien mother ship that had been spotted near the moon.
Directed by incoming director Liam O’Donnell, this second film of the franchise was a bold attempt on two counts. One, it starts on the same night as the first film and gives us a picture of the other survivors and how their lives changed because of the alien invasion. Secondly, it took the most potent aspects of its source film and focused only on those components, highlighting them in the process.
For instance, the film had a further otherworldly outlook of the alien mothership and gave an essential role to Trent, the dude who had his brain transferred into an alien body. Also, the film was interesting because it included some martial arts in a film about an alien invasion. When was the last time you saw that?
So, this film offers not only good action sequences and hand-to-hand combat but also good CGI—definitely a great blend for a Saturday night flick. We hope that you’d recognize Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian from The Raid films. Having said that, this one is one of those really notorious films that polarize the viewers. Either you will hate it, or you’ll love it. There really isn’t any middle ground.
Skylines (2020)
The film picks up fifteen years after Beyond Skyline. We see Rose leading a fleet of human spaceships to go and fight against the alien spaceships. By now, the aliens have been named Harvesters. It took them two films to do that! Goodness, gracious! Nevertheless, the alien mother ship named Armada is set in the orbit of the moon.
Rose and her fleet pierce through several barriers and enemy lines, but when it was time to destroy the central ship, Roze froze for a moment and ended up destroying one of her own ships in order to stop the alien ships from firing on Earth. Although shooting down her own ship cost her thousands of lives, it successfully destroyed the Armada.
After the incident, however, Rose became overwhelmed with grief and guilt, so much so that she vanished from the picture after the battle. Meanwhile, humanity attempted to stand on its fleet once again in the following five peaceful years. The freed alien-human hybrids are now called Pilots. In these five years, Rose started to live in a tent city near what was left of London.
All the while, she avoided resistance forces that were led by one Leon, who was on the lookout for her. Meanwhile, she also had to get routine hyper-oxygenated blood transfusions with the help of Dr. Mal, without which her hybrid nature would surface, and she would age rapidly and ultimately succumb to it.
In a strange turn of events, the Pilots soon become infected with a virus, and the infection soon takes the form of a pandemic. Furthermore, it is affecting anyone and everyone who has undergone surgery to get transplanted Pilot limbs. For instance, Huana, the rogue cop who turned good in the second film, had lost three of his limbs.
The virus not only eats the Pilots but also sends them back to the state where they were mind-controlled by the blue lights. Leon soon has Rose captured, and she is brought to General Radford, who tells Rose that the Armada’s core drive had warped to the homeworld of the Harvesters, called Cobalt One, just before Rose had fired her spaceship to destroy it. So basically, she sacrificed all those people for nothing.
Live with that, Rose. Live with that. Moreover, the only way to save the Pilots is through using the Armada’s core drive. Here, she also gets reunited with her brother Trent, who’s also a Pilot. Together with General Radford’s men, Rose and Trent head to Cobalt One because why not! Space travel is a piece of cake. Upon reaching Cobalt One, their ship crashes after colliding with an alien vessel. Upon exiting their ship Rose, Trent, and others find several Harvester corpses along with mutated Harvesters.
While a team member named Alexi sacrifices herself to destroy the mutated Harvesters, Rose gets captured and is produced before the Harvester leader named Matriarch, who accuses humans of coming to kill her race. Rose soon realizes that it was the Matriarch and her telepathic influence on Rose that caused her to freeze in the first place. The Matriarch was also hindering Rose from using her powers.
Upon gaining this new knowledge, Rose no longer fears truly embracing her powers and successfully gets control of the core drive. But, another member from Rose’s team named Owen betrayed the others and fled with the core drive. Rose and Leon soon discover that it was Radford who had created the virus to infect and kill the Pilots and also that he had detonated a bioweapon on the Harvester home planet before Rose and her team arrived there.
Back on Earth, Dr. Mal tries to find a cure to the pandemic, but the mind-controlled Pilots attack her before she could finish her work. The residents fight back these aliens, but to their dismay, hordes of infected Pilots approach them from London. However, Rose arrives on Earth from a wormhole just in time to suck all the Pilots into her ship.
Dr. Mal’s cure had worked, and they managed to save all the Pilots. Furthermore, Trent, who had been infected with the virus, is saved by transplanting his brain into another body. Later, Rose learns the location of her adoptive father, Mark, who was kept prisoner by Radford on suspicion that Mark was an enemy of the state.
The third film of the franchise tried to get ambitious but went a bit too far, and disregarded all notions about the laws of physics and general common sense, truly a rarer resource than the brain itself. The film takes place after the events of the first two films, and humans go straight to the planet of the alien invaders.
How they managed to achieve such technology and how they discovered wormholes with such ease will forever remain a mystery to humankind. It seems that they were struggling to come up with another decent story for the third film and thought it best to bring back the villains from the first film, i.e., mind-controlled bio-mechanical aliens.
Lindsey Morgen as Rose Corley and the film’s impeccable effects were probably the only saving grace of the film. Despite the fact that the film packs a great deal of unintentional laughter, it also packs a hefty amount of great action sequences that are too thrilling to watch. It seems like Skyline’s Rose was intended to become the Alien franchise’s Ripley.
Harvesters from Skyline Explored
It turns out that the aliens from the Skyline universe or the Harvesters created the human race millions of years ago so that human brains could be harvested at a later point to build warriors. They place human brains as the central system in bio-mechanical bodies. While they managed to harvest most of the human brains, the survivors formed a militia of sorts and fought back their creators.
These aliens are classified into good and bad depending on the light they radiate. The red ones are the good guys while the blue ones, well, not so much. The aliens come in several different shapes and sizes, and each of them has a separate role to perform. For instance, the drones or the squid-like aliens have slimy dark-colored skin and possess multiple eyes and tentacles that glow.
They use these tentacles to send their victims into a trance-like state. They also steal the spinal cord and brains of their victims and are resilient enough to survive a few minutes without a brain of their own. Destroying a drone takes heavy ammunition and explosives. Then there are the Hydras that serve as alien dropships but can independently hunt humans.
The more fascinating type of these aliens is the Tankers that are huge, quadrupedal creatures that only know how to wreak havoc in their vicinity. Because of their gargantuan size, they need a coordinated rocket attack or tank shells to be brought down. But due to their inflammable skin, fire serves as a weakness, and it helps in slowing them down. And their sole purpose is to gather as many humans as possible for harvesting.
A tanker’s advanced form is far stronger and can fire beams of energy that can take down large vehicles, as well as choppers. The most commonly portrayed type of aliens in the films were the warriors, resulting from a harvested human brain placed in a bio-mechanical body. The Hive Mind controls these warriors. They are essentially the foot soldiers of the alien race, and although humanoid in structure, they are far stronger than humans; tearing apart limbs is rather easy for them.
However, if a warrior’s brain manages to escape its hypnosis, the Warrior becomes free from the control of the hive mind. These free aliens are called Hybrids, Pilots, or Red Light Aliens. All the Warriors serve under the Shepherds, who, in turn, are under the control of the Overlord, who is practically the supreme leader of Harvesters and the primary antagonist of the Skyline Franchise. The Overlord is the one who leads the war, while the Shepherds lead the battles.
Why did the Harvesters need Human Brains?
This is a long-standing question that didn’t necessarily get addressed in the film. The movie shows various scenes where the aliens extract human brains and place them in their own bodies. They do this primarily by hypnotizing their victims by using the mysterious blue light, which could be a form of an advanced virus that helps in blocking the brain.
We saw that a few characters like Jarrod had become immune to the light because he was exposed to it more than once and hence developed some sort of psychological antibodies against the virus. On the other hand, Sarge, the blind man, was rendered immune because, well, he could not see the light.
Now, it is possible that the aliens used human brains either as external implants like cochlear implants and pacemakers or as limb transplants, much like we humans use organ transplants. We also noticed that the brains they acquired seemed to wear out after prolonged use, much like devices like pacemakers. So, it is quite evident that the Harvester needed human brains to sustain their species from impending doom, and not because they wanted any sort of feudal control over Earth.
Future of the Franchise
Writer of the first film and director of the next two, Liam O’Donnell, teased about a fourth film titled Skyline Radial. Liam also expressed his intent to bring back the principal cast. Apart from this, there’s no new information regarding the film, but we will definitely post it on our website marvelousvideos.com as soon as we get new information. You can check out our website for more interesting stuff. We’ll leave a link in the description.